The Autumn Mist
by Mojoflower
Summary: "Sometimes Sherlock would open his giant sea-colored eyes and wonder what he had done in a previous life to be condemned to such tranquility as he'd experienced for decades. Quiet. Calm. Peaceful. It was hateful." A crossover with the children's song Puff the Magic Dragon, where Sherlock is the Dragon and John is Jackie Paper.


**Author's Note:** I STRONGLY urge you to follow my AO3 link (on my Profile page) and read this story on AO3. Kayjaykayme illustrated this, and her drawings are stunning and heart-rending and so numerous that I've named her co-author. I don't think the words alone have the same impact.

* * *

Sometimes Sherlock would open his giant sea-colored eyes and wonder what he had done in a previous life to be condemned to such tranquility as he'd experienced for decades. Quiet. Calm. Peaceful. It was hateful.

The sea crashed in. Tides rose. Tiny creatures lived, fought and died in the pools left behind. Tides sank, and the fetid stench of rotting sea vegetation remained. He'd lumber to the opening of his cave, sorrowful, lazy, but most of all, most harmfully, most detrimentally, mostdangerously bored, and stare out at the bleak vista of waves.

Year after year had passed with only rare flares of excitement. Broken ships occasionally would stagger in to shore. Dying sailors and shredded skeletons came to roost on the border of his eyrie in the cliffs by the sea. But the balance of his life… the balance of it was gray. Dreary. Empty. Lonely.

So Sherlock stared over the horizon, and the vivacity and eagerness, the curiosity, slowly seeped from his eyes, and his scales dulled from their original shimmer, and Mycroft, winged and attentive, high above, began to fret.

Until one day. One day, skipping down the coarse dark sand of the beach, came a boy...

* * *

The first thing the boy noticed, when he rounded a jumbled pile of boulders and bumped into the dragon, was a shallow cut across Sherlock's chest.

"You are hurt," he said. Not,You are a dragon, orYou are impossible, orHelp! I'm going to find an adult ... Only... You are hurt.

He was scarcely seven. He stared up at the enormous beast with large navy eyes, concerned and focused.

"I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," he said, perfectly serious. "I don't want you to bleed... um... Dragon. You might get an infection."

Sherlock smiled, inside, carefully hiding the physical expression of it. But something must have shone through the arrangement of his face, because the young boy smiled back at him. "What is your name?" he asked.

And Sherlock answered, "My name is Sherlock."

The boy only smiled, and approached with his stained pocket handkerchief. "Ok now, Sherlock," he said. "Don't be scared. I only want to help," and with those words, dipped the cotton into a nearby pool, and dabbed at Sherlock's cut with care. "My name is Jackie," he murmured as he worked, and Sherlock's eyes slowly blinked in acknowledgment.

* * *

Jackie Watson snuck down to spend time with Sherlock often after this. "Jackie is a kind of nickname… short for John…" he tried to explain.

Sherlock didn't care.

Jackie showed up one day with several yards of jute. "I'm going to teach you Cat's Cradle," he laughed, excited about his game. So Sherlock extended his claws, as long as the boy himself, sharp enough to bring down ships, to destroy empires, to drown queens, and allowed the child to wrap string from forefinger to thumb.

And in return, Sherlock took him sailing. They had no need of a ship. Sherlock curled young Jackie in the parabola of his raised tail, nestled against cool green scales, and kept his small friend well above the cold rush of water as he swam.

"Sherlock! Sherlock! Pirate ho!" Jackie cried in his wispy, high-pitched child's voice. Sherlock happily listed to the left, headed for a sloop clearly commissioned from His Majesty Louis XIV.

"Look, Jackie," he instructed, "you can recognize the ship by it's outline... three masts in this region can only indicate a French Sovereign of the Seas, do you recognize the uniform of the men on deck? They have come recently from a skirmish with Barbary Pirates, which they clearly lost, as you can see from the pattern of damage wrought to the lower left quarterdeck..."

In his excitement, Jackie hugged the tip of Sherlock's tail, which gently wrapped around his shoulders, holding him safely. "You're brilliant, Sherlock!" he exclaimed. "Let's go take them hostage, do! En garde!"

So Sherlock amiably dodged around the perimeter of the ship, easily avoiding their clumsy canon, and Jackie laughed so hard at the hullabaloo they created that he nearly slipped into the ocean.

Eventually, His Majesty's Navy gave up and sailed away, crowding the side of their ship, bowing and waving their hats in farewell.

When Jackie went home that night, he thought he'd never been happier.

* * *

Years passed, one fading gray yet warm into the next, sunlight muted on the beach, and Sherlock realized, in retrospect, that Jackie had grown... that he'd become inches taller each year. That, as they'd sailed the cold islets along the coast, carefully protecting the seaboard towns against smugglers, against the king's men, against the landing parties of the enemy... all along, Jackie had grown.

John crept down the beach to be with Sherlock whenever he could. His family was filled with strife, and as he grew older, his escapes weren't as frequent. But the meaning when they met was all the greater for that… and Jackie was so grateful for the stable, grouchy presence of his friend.

Then one day, when Jackie was newly a man, he brought someone else to Sherlock's cave.

"Look, Sherlock," he sang, so happy he could have lit suns. "Look, come meet her. It's my girl! Her name is Mary."

There was a very long pause, as Sherlock hunched in his cave, angry, so cold, so frustrated, so... isolated and helpless. He did not want to go meet Jackie's girl, for he was Jackie's dragon.

And yet, in spite of not wishing to do so, Sherlock slunk out of his coil of caverns... he knew not why. This was the first time in millennia he'd paid attention to human mores.

"Mary," he growled, a civil greeting coming from Sherlock. And John glowed like the dawn of a new era, and Mary simpered...

Sherlock retreated to the cool, sea-drenched depths of his caves. Somewhere, above, in a region Sherlock refused to acknowledge, Mycroft laughed. He laughed...

Jackie's visits became scarcer and brief. They no longer sailed the seas, or played silly games. He had a job now, and a … girlfriend … and wished to sit and talk of serious things. "Call me John, Sherlock," he said one day. "Jackie is a child's name. No one calls me Jackie anymore."

* * *

Over time, Mary's appeal faded, Sherlock was fiercely glad when John told him it was over.

Their visits increased, John chucking casual stones into the surf as he discussed his dreams, the places he wished to see, the things he'd like to accomplish.

Then came the day when John came down one last time, dressed in tan, in camouflage, starched and behatted and spine stiff, ready and thrilled to serve his country.

To Sherlock this made no sense. 'Country' had no meaning. His stretch of shore was the same as it had ever been. But off John went, tragic and grown up, sturdy and afraid and so... hopeful... that it made Sherlock's giant heart burn under his green scales.

Days passed into months, passed into years. The sun moved from behind the clouds. Sherlock kicked his way through shed scales of green when he bothered to patrol the front of his cave. And he bothered less and less. The gentle patter of molted scales was a counterpoint to the years. Days in. Days out. Empty beaches.

* * *

And meanwhile, John fought. He tried so hard. With all his valiant heart, he fought. But one bright day, far from the foggy strand where Sherlock waited, there was the whistle of IED, the terrifying calamity of explosion, the adrenaline of trying to patch together his crew. When John fell, he thought of life, he thought of love, he thought of all the things that bind humanity together, that make them better, better goddammit, than tearing each other to bits.

But he never thought of dragons, slowly curving their tails into boats by the shore, twitching the edges of their sharp-toothed jaws into faint smiles as they allowed the encroachment of a small boy, found he was willing to play…

And fever raged.

* * *

When John returned from the wars he had more than a limp. The clapboard house by the sea in which he'd grown up now seemed smaller, salt-encrusted and aged, withered and sad. It was many weeks before he emerged onto the crooked balcony, stared at the stairs down which he used to bound.

But the ocean was the same. Gray and blue and opaque by turns, as it had always been. The cold, cold air of spring harassed him, in his blanket on the deck, leaning on his cane.

John headed slowly for the sea.

Down the stairs, along the dunes, picking his way through tumbles of dried seaweed, unwillingly enjoying the smell of rescinded salt and life. John wandered down the beach, thinking of childhood dreams of long ago. His pace was slow and painful, the burn of infected organs within his body complaining, begging him to stop. But he struggled on.

He wouldn't admit what he was looking for, would he. He'd had his share of bombs, of screams, of the frantic minutes in which a doctor can determine if someone lives or dies. Dragons, after all, can hardly be as real as war.

But he walked. And as he walked, he whistled. An old tune came unbidden to his lips.

"Puff, the magic dragon, lives by the sea..."

* * *

At last John came to rest alongside a cave by the ocean. He was tired, so tired. His dark blue eyes were half-closed as they stared over the waves. He was not sure why he was there. The chill of fever wracked his body, and he felt so weak, so weary. So finished.

And then, then a heavy weight dropped gently on his shoulder. The familiar sea scent of his dragon companion blew hot across his cheek and shoulder. "Jackie," sighed a deep breath of wind. "My friend." The voice was as resonant as waves in a cavern, echoing warm and relentless on an ancient shoreline. John leaned back into the scaly comfort, the hard warmth behind jaw and ear.

"Sherlock," he said, and his breath hitched in a sob. "Sherlock. I'm sorry." A tear slipped, embarrassingly, down his face. He was a soldier - a seasoned killer - and nothing should make him cry. But another tear followed the first.

Sherlock huffed fishy breath across his collarbones. "Jackie, you've been gone for far too long," he grumbled. "It's been dreadfully dull."

"Oh, Sherlock," John sighed, and lifted his hand to curl around the cool scales, each curve and indentation familiar to him in spite of the years. "I'm dying, old friend."

And John leaned on that neck and smiled. Tears slid, slowly and unheeded down his face, leaving icy streaks in their wake. The fog was so cold, and he couldn't seem to stop shivering. "I missed you," is all he said. The pain in his gut abated, at long last, the sharp agony of sepsis fading into the background. "I miss the pirates."

And Sherlock leaned closer, his own breathing short and choppy, "My Jackie," he whispered, and John felt a scalding wetness against his face. "Don't go..."

But it was too late. John wasn't hearing anymore. He felt only contentment; back in his childhood home, pressed against his friend.

The end wasn't such a scary thing.

* * *

Sherlock roared his grief to the sky. He hissed it to the waves, he stomped it into the cold wet sand. On his two rear legs he roamed his shoreline, holding John's cooling body tightly to his chest. His anger knew no bounds. His sorrow was fathomless. His pain was infinite.

John was draped across his forearms, limp as only a body bereft of life can be: spineless, boneless, disjointed with the abandonment of spirit.

Sherlock laid him tenderly beside the giant basalt rocks and dove into the waves, crashing into ship after ship, daring any to survive where his friend could not.

None did.

And that night, in his cave, as he lay with his snout against the cold skin, eyes mournfully lifted to the cave door, tragic and lost, there was a rustling of wings.

White wings.

It was Mycroft, drifting light as clouds into the cave, settling gently as a thought next to the chilled body of the overwhelmed soldier. Sherlock glared from his depths; glared and snarled and hoped. He hoped with such anguish that it felt like death itself. Mycroft looked at him and smiled, a small soft thing filled with sympathy and love. "Caring is not an advantage," he hummed to his scaly companion, "most of the time, brother mine, my dear brother, my only kin. Caring is pain. Caring is danger. Caring is growth."

Sherlock merely growled. He had no need of lectures. Mycroft would... or he wouldn't. And pithy sermons served in between meant little to him.

There was a quaver of ivory feathers. A shower of shimmering stars, golden sparkles arching from the sky, falling from the roof of the cavern, singing hope and life and beauty as they danced to the floor, to the body of John... of Sherlock's Jackie. Sherlock held his breath, and ignored the hot tears that dripped down his snout and mixed with the joyous light spanning the wings of his brother.

There was a moment of singing, a moment of the kind of music that only the earth can create, of wind in a vale, of water over pebbles, of waves against the sand, of the sighing of trees, the fluttering of feathers and the purr of a cat.

John opened his eyes.

Mycroft left. Sherlock didn't know when or how. It didn't matter.

John opened his eyes, and there was enough of a glimmer of golden light to illuminate his irises, to turn the blue of his eyes into verdant vivacity, and his breath sucked into his lungs lustily, painfully, with all due evidence of power and yearning.

He gasped and trembled, and Sherlock crowded up beside him, offering the comfort of his presence, the heat of his body, the protection of his wings and long sharp claws. An enormous eye, pupil slitted like a cat, glared wetly at its charge, and Jackie stared back, bonded in that moment to something bigger than any human could have a right to know.

"Sherlock," he whispered.

And the dragon whispered back, "I am here." He rubbed the sunken cheek against his shoulder with his snout. "I am here, my Jackie. And we yet have pirates to seek…."

End


End file.
